The ‘Holy Days’ of Queen Elizabeth I
2020
The annual celebrations of the accession day and birthday of Queen Elizabeth I are a familiar
subject in studies of her reign, yet their beginnings, status and purpose have remained
uncertain. By examining revisions of the calendar of the Church of England published in the
Book of Common Prayer from early in the reign, this article establishes the dates of the first
recognition of these public anniversaries. It questions the weight that has been attached to the
evidence for these occasions provided in churchwardens’ accounts, and challenges the
conventional interpretations that accession day began and spread as wholly spontaneous, local
and popular festivities, and expressed a straightforward patriotic ‘cult’ of the queen. While
agreeing that they were not holidays, and explaining that they were not strictly ‘holy days’, it is
argued that the two anniversaries began as and continued to be religious occasions, and are
best understood in terms of the religious politics of the Elizabethan state. As other scholars
have shown by careful exegesis of sermons addressed to the queen, ‘godly’ clergy persistently
urged her to undertake further protestant reformation and firmer anti-catholic measures. With
the anniversaries and in the forms of prayer for accession day, archbishops and bishops
provided opportunities and texts both to sustain loyalty to the actual queen and to stimulate
hopes of a queen who would more completely fulfil their understanding of her providential
role.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
0
References
2
Citations
NaN
KQI